Are Online Courses Dying? How To Save Your Online Course Business

You’re not imagining it: online courses look like they’re “booming” everywhere you turn, but if you’ve got a course (or you’re thinking about building one), the numbers can feel painfully… not booming. You might be wondering if you missed the window, if your course is suddenly “too late,” or if you’re about to waste months on something the market already moved past. In this Q&A Wednesday episode, Omar tackles a question and breaks down why the signals feel so confusing right now. He explains what’s actually changing in online education, why the approach that used to work can suddenly feel like it’s falling flat, and what you need to pay attention to if you want your course business to keep working as the industry evolves. You’ll leave with clarity and a fresh way to think about where the real opportunity is today. If you want to stop guessing and make sure you’re not building a course the “old way,” click play at the top of the page and get a clear read on how to keep your course business alive and well, even as the landscape shifts. MBA2777 Are Online Courses Dying? How To Save Your Online Course Business Recommended episode to explore: The Beginner's Blueprint For Building A Digital Product That Actually Sells To submit your questions, visit 100mba.net/q. Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHi SUBSCRIBE YouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• 1:28Speaker 00

  If you ever thought about building an online course, or you already have one, you probably asked yourself some version of this question. Is it still worth it? Because from the outside, the signals make no sense. The online course market is heading towards $400 billion globally. More people are buying online education than any other point in human history. And all the course creators I speak to, and I know them personally, I spoke to about a dozen of them recently, they all say the same thing. They've been in the game for five, six, seven years, and they all are reporting the worst numbers since they've started their business. So which is it? Is there an opportunity? Is there money to be made? Or is it all dried up? Is online

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Education over. Here's the answer. The opportunity is actually bigger than ever. But the model that most people are using to chase that opportunity is absolutely dead. They're going after it the wrong way. And today I'm going to show you what to do instead. How to do it the right way, because the market has shifted. And if you don't shift with it, you're asking for trouble.

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  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

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  If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast, so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much.

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  Before I give you any context, I want to give you the most important insight of this episode, because if you get this one thing, everything else makes sense. Most people are selling online courses are selling information. You need to stop doing that. You need to start selling transformation. And there's a difference. And let me tell you what it looks like. Information looks like this. I got 12 modules. I got 46 lessons on this topic. Everything you need to know about this topic, I'm going to teach you. Sounds reasonable, right? Problem is that nobody's buying that anymore. Transformation, on the hand, sounds like this. Here's a specific result you will have at the end of this program. And here's the exact plan we're going to go through. You're going to lose 10 pounds in the next six weeks. That's an example. People

• 3:53Speaker 00

  will buy. Scratch it. They're going to run frantically if there's an opportunity to get an outcome. People are tired of learning. And by the way, information is available plentiful. People are not buying information. Here is an example. I'll give you two examples. The one is this podcast, okay? I've been running this podcast for 11, almost 12 years. Are you paying anything right now? No, it's free. I understand that information is supposed to be free. It should be. People should be able to educate themselves and then implement the way they feel. Now, if they want more beyond information, if they want implementation, if they want things to get done for them, in other words, a service, that's a different price. That's a different thing. I don't offer that, but you could buy that somewhere.

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  Here's a second example. I saw this guy selling an online course on a strategy to win bigger pots in poker. I play poker recreationally. I play in some tournaments. I have a lot of fun with it. I love it. Now, I'm not going to name this person or their course or their strategy to protect their identity, but you know, it seemed like a pretty solid course and a lot of information was going to be provided. And I was about to buy the course because I was curious about the strategy. He was going to provide some information about a different way to approach certain positions, certain situations in poker. He's not going to promise me an outcome. He's not going to increase my win rate or increase my bankroll through winnings in poker. None of that. It was just going to provide me information. Now, I was about to buy the course, but before I did,

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  I went to my buddy Claude. You know, I went to AI and I asked Claude, "Hey, this strategy is called so-and-so, and I'm thinking about buying this course. Here's a URL. Should I buy this course? Is there something that you could teach me from this course? Or something that you can show me this strategy or explain the strategy to me? Or is buying the course required?" And Claude just told me, "Hey, you don't need to buy the course. The strategy is actually these five pillars. Let me explain what they are. 1, 2, 3, 4." And he gave me a summary and then said, "You want me to go into depth? I can teach you each part of those modules, each five of those things, step by step, so that when you play poker the next time, you can try it out." Now, it doesn't mean this course is a scam. This person is a scammer. No. But it just means that I could get the information somewhere else.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  And that is just clear proof that information is just not enough as your product when you're selling education. So what's actually happening here? Online courses are not dying, but the old model of online courses is dying, okay? And there's a massive difference. You could get a piece of the pie of this $400 billion industry in 2026. It's going to hit over $1 trillion in 2032. So this means- is not a dying industry. The trend is going upwards. It's just a maturing industry. Things are changing. Now, creators who understand this, they're gonna adapt and their best years are to come. But creators who are still running the old 2016, 2017 playbook of selling courses are going to go out of business. So what killed the old model?

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Well, three things, and all three things happened at the same time, like the perfect storm. First, information became free. AI, like I mentioned, YouTube, Google, anything. A standard online course teaches you from a pure information standpoint can be found in a few seconds. You are not competing with other course creators anymore. You are competing with ChatGPT, with Claude, with Gemini. And those models, the paid versions, not even the free versions, but the paid versions don't cost $9.97. It costs 20 bucks a month. By the way, this is the biggest bargain in town. If you're not paying for Claude, for example, for 20 bucks a month, you're nuts. This is incredible opportunity to utilize and leverage this technology in ways you can't imagine.

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  So selling knowledge alone in 2026 is like selling bottled water next to a waterfall, right? From a spring, right? The water is fine, the water that you're selling is fine. The pricing is the problem. Why would I buy your bottled water when there's fresh spring water right next to you? The second thing that happened is the market got burned. The pandemic created a land rush when it came to online courses. Everyone launched a course, which meant quality collapsed. And buyers paid good money and never finished those courses and never implemented and got burnt out. So what happened is that consumers really started to become skeptical of online courses. There's no more excitement anymore. There's no more curiosity.

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  And now trust is becoming a very rare commodity in online education. A lot of people don't trust these online courses anymore when before they're kind of like, hey, this is cool. I'll learn this. I'll pay this much money. And the third thing is it became common that completion rates of these courses have become embarrassing. Okay, the industry never wanted to talk about this, but the average online course completion rate is under 15%. And that's for paid courses. Worse when it's free, which means for every hundred people who bought an online course, fewer than 15 finish it. That's just pathetic. The old model doesn't work. Now, why is this a problem? Course completion, because if they don't complete the course, it's gonna be very hard for them to implement what they learn, and therefore, they're not gonna get the results that you want them to have, so that you can get some testimonials to prove that what you're selling actually works.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  You want completion rates sky high, so that you can get incredible testimonials and just proof of concept, proving to yourself that what you're actually teaching and what you're providing is helping other people in getting results. Today's episode is supported by Rosetta Stone. I absolutely love Rosetta Stone, because it's helping me learn Italian faster than I can ever imagine. Why do I want to learn Italian? Well, who doesn't love Italy? But of course, Nicole's family is Italian, and I love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game.

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• 11:29Speaker 00

  So, what actually works? What should you do as we move forward? Well, there's three models I want to share with you that you could choose from, that have huge upsides. Model number one is what I call the implementation system. Stop calling it a course. Stop thinking it as a course, okay? Thinking of it as a course, I should say. A course delivers content. As soon as you call it a course, you're thinking that I'm just giving content. An implementation system delivers a result. The difference is how you build this, how you put this together. An implementation system starts with an outcome and works backwards. That means whatever you're going to be offering has an outcome. Meaning that, what are they going to be able to do by the end? What are they going to get at the end?

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  Then, I have to work backwards, how am I going to get them there? So, what is a specific result that the student needs in this program? And then, what are the exact steps between where they are now and the result? Where do I build that bridge to get them to that destination? What are the tools? What are the templates? What are the resources that I need to give them to remove all the obstacles that are in their way, to make this so easy for them to get that result? What does accountability look like from inside the program? How do I make sure that if they're having an off day, a lazy day, that they do what they need to do to get to the result? The content, the videos, the lessons, is not the product. It's just one of the tools you're going to use to get them the result. What you're selling is the transformation.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  They are something right now, they want to become something else. They are somewhere, and They want to go somewhere else. So for example, we have a program called the $100 Bay. I'm sure you're aware of it. And we have three tracks, start, grow, scale. And each track has a result, has an outcome. Start is exactly what it sounds like. It gets people to their first sale, their first dollar. If they made $0, we're going to make sure you're not at zero anymore. You're going to be at least at $1. The growth track gets them to $300,000 in annual revenue. And the scale track gets them to $1 million in annual revenue. That's the outcome. Yes, we have super high quality video lessons, but we have those lessons because it helps them with the outcome, not because that's what they bought. I'm not selling lessons. I know that the lessons alone don't work.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  They need implementation. That's why we have like an interactive workbook where they actually do the work to build their business alongside with the lessons. And we actually tell them, don't move on until you actually do the homework. Like for example, build your website for your business is one of the homeworks in one of the modules before you move on, because you won't be able to do much if you don't have a website. Yes, we give the recommendations and the tools and all that kind of stuff. But the point here is that you need step by step milestones. We give them templates, like a one page business plan, like P and L sheets, like finance templates. We give them AI tools so that they can write better emails. They could validate their ideas. They could create better offers and price their products. Why? Why do we give these things?

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Again, I'm trying to remove all the roadblocks, all the excuses, all the things that are going to stop them from getting to the result. Model number two, course plus coaching. This is a hybrid model. If you have a course right now and it's underperforming, this is the fastest way to save it. And almost nobody's doing it. Okay, they just think that this is a course and I'm just going to hope that everybody buys it. If you just add one weekly group coaching call for one hour with your group, that's going to add tremendous value. That one addition will fundamentally change what you are selling. Here's why it works so well. Your course solves the what and the how. Shows them what they're, they don't know, the information. It shows them how to do it. Now, the coaching call solves the why.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  It's not working for them specifically. Because if we're going to be honest, no matter what you are helping people with, every situation is different. And in order for you to get people unstuck, you're going to have to understand their specific situation. That gap between generic information and personal application is exactly where most people fall off, where students fall off. You want to make sure that they have no excuses and they get out of their own way. They watch the lessons, they understand the concepts, and they hit a specific situation where they're like, "I'm stuck. I don't know how to move forward." Let's say you're in the fitness industry and you're getting people fit. And they have a specific regimen or diet and workout. But the holidays are coming up.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  What am I not going to have, you know, food and dessert with my family? There's not a lot of time to go to the gym when it's all hectic and the kids are home from school. They're stuck. You're going to give them a plan, specific to that. And of course, with coaching, stuck means bring it to the call on Tuesday and we're going to solve it. We're going to get you unstuck. This is also an incredible retention tool. It gets people to want to come back week after week and continue to renew their membership with you. It's also a lot easier to get testimonials when you're coaching live and doing breakthroughs live. And you can grab their testimonials right after, or even on the call. You can also charge more for this type of program. Not because you're adding more content. It's not about the content, but you're adding accountability.

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  You're adding a chance for people to say, "There is no way I can fail. There's no more excuses." You get real time feedback. You get unstuck when you need to. You get to ask questions. You know for sure that it's going to work for you because you're going to get tailored coaching. You don't need to rebuild your whole program. All you have to do is add a weekly group coaching call. That's all you gotta do. And it's going to add incredible amount of value. Model number three, the cohort launch. This one is actually very interesting because people don't understand how powerful it is. This model really addresses the accountability problem at the structural level. When you have a cohort launch, that means you have a group of people starting all at the same time.

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  You're going to have a cohort that starts, let's say, the second week in January. Everybody's starting and they're going to do a six-week program. And when that cohort is finished, there'll be a next program. Or you're going to have another cohort start the week after. But the point is that everybody's starting and ending at the same time. There's live sessions, there's a shared start date, there's a shared end date. So students are going through the program together. Now, there's a real accountability piece, not just between you and the students, but with each other, students with students. The magic of cohorts is that the community that's being built is not a feature. It is the product. It's the reason why people love these programs. And the numbers don't lie. Cohort completion rates run from 85% to 90%.

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  That's incredible. Compare that to the 15% of online courses. Oof, that's way better. And the funny thing is that there's no really difference in the quality of the information. I've been part of a lot of cohort programs, coaching programs, that were in a cohort fashion. And there's something about learning alongside 30 other people who are having the same experience as you. And you're all having the same shifts in psychology and you're all kind of getting better together. Now, the interesting thing is that you don't want to be the one that gets left behind. You don't want to miss a live session. You want to make sure you show up every single time. There's a real social pressure there, and it's a really healthy social pressure. There's also this urgency that self-paced evergreen programs just don't really create. You know, this idea of like, consume it whenever you want, wherever you want.

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  That doesn't really work. People need a start date. "I'm starting my transformation today. I will get to my outcome on this day." It's exciting. And because this whole group is kind of pushing each other, it creates this positive energy where everybody pushes each other to get results, which generates incredible social proof, and again, lots of testimonials.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Is this episode giving you some clarity? Is it getting you pumped? Is it getting you excited? If so, I'm happy. But I do think you should subscribe to the show because I have an upcoming episode that I'm working on. They're gonna absolutely love. It's something that I really enjoyed creating. And it's all about are successful people just getting lucky? How much does luck influence success in the first place? I dive deeply into this and really address this topic head on. So if you want to hear about it, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it. I also think it's time for me to address the elephant in the room. I kind of touched on it earlier, but every course creator I talk to right now have some version of the same fear. AI is going to replace me. Why would anyone pay me or pay for my course?

• 19:48Speaker 00

  When chat GPT or Claude can answer their questions for free? And here's my honest sake, they're right. If you are insisting on selling information, you are no match for AI. Okay, AI is going to be you every day of the week and twice on Sunday. But here what AI can't do, at least not for now. Okay, it can't sit on a group coaching call and build a relationship with your students, diagnose a specific person's specific business problem that's not working and solve it. It can't build a community of people that are going through the same thing at the same time, creating an accountability system and a connection that changes whether somebody quits or not. You know, if somebody leaves the group, they're just not going to just go unnoticed. There's some feeling of like, hey, I should just not abandon these people.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  I should continue to go on. My story, my personal experience, building two businesses, running them simultaneously for 10 years, selling one, then growing the other. That is my moat. That is my lived experience. It's what I can offer people through this podcast and everything else we do. That chat GPT just can't because it doesn't have the same judgment. It doesn't have the same wisdom. It doesn't have the same nuance. It doesn't have the understanding and the context of what I've been through. All right, so three moves that you can take on this week to take action. Enough strategy. Here's what you actually do. Move one, audit your sales page of your course right now. Read every sentence. Count how many times you describe what the course, the modules, the lessons, the content is.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Now, count how many times you describe the student's life and what it looks like after they take the course. What's the outcome? If the ratio is not heavily towards the after picture, rewrite that sales page. Make sure it's all about the outcome and about the experience they're going to go through, the transformation they're going to go through. Nobody buys modules, right? If I can just download the information in your brain and you don't have to watch any videos, wouldn't that be better? That would be best, just like The Matrix. So it's not really about how many videos. It's about what you could do for me. What is the outcome after this is all said and done? The second thing you could do is add one live touch point. If your course has no live element, this is going to be a priority. It doesn't need to be weekly.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  It could be a monthly Q and A call. It doesn't even have to be a structured lesson. It could be just an open Q and A. Heck, it doesn't even need to be a live video call. You could make it a WhatsApp call. And move three, try one cohort. Do not rebuild anything. Just do a launch and build this one cohort and have a start date, have an end date and tell people, hey, we're going to take in a live cohort of, let's say, 30 people. And once we hit 30 people, that's it, then we're going to close the doors. Cap enrollment. Open it to your list and see what happens. See what kind of energy you get. And then when you go through the cohort, see what happens with completion rates, with testimonials, with the outcomes that you achieve for your students.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  So to wrap up, online courses are not dying, but the lazy version of online courses is dying. This version where you, you know, record the content once, set up the funnel, wait for the money to come in, that version's over. That gravy train has made its last stop. It's over. But what it's replacing is actually better. More accountability, more community, more genuine transformation, more skin in the game from the creator, you, more results for the student, more loyalty, more retention, more referrals, more business. That sounds all good. The market is bigger than ever and it's growing. The only question is, is are you going to be building a product that was good for 10 years ago or today in the future? If this episode has helped you, I highly encourage you to check out a previous episode that we recently published called "The Beginner's A Blueprint For Building A

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Digital Product That Actually Sells." This is a whole A to Z of how to build a digital product in 2026. We recently published it, so it's easy to find in whatever app you're using right now to consume the podcast.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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